


If dust was made to settle

by imustspeakmyheart



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dissociation, Established Relationship, M/M, Past Abuse, derealisation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 08:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12128577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imustspeakmyheart/pseuds/imustspeakmyheart
Summary: Under the table Taako clenched his fists and pressed them into his knees. The faint taste of dust in his mouth was making him nauseous and it took everything in him to stay focused, stay present, stay real. But it was hard when he looked at the table that he knew was occupied by Carey and Killian and only saw moving shapes. Dust. Nothing.--Small character study of Taako who deals with dissociating with some Taakitz on the side.





	If dust was made to settle

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to make it clear that I wrote this from my own experience and that this is in no way meant to represent the experience of everyone who deals with dissociation and derealisation. 
> 
> That said, please enjoy reading!!

Over the years Taako had gotten pretty good at acting like he’s all fine and dandy. Which is why he was completely taken off guard when he’s nudged gently in the side and found himself startled out of whatever dark hole his mind had decided to vacate itself into. He hadn’t realized he’d zoned out.

 

“You okay there Taako?” Magnus was looking at him, the genuine worry clear in his eyes even if he hid it with an easy smile. Merle didn’t look up from his food, but Taako knew he was listening.

 

The three of them were in the BoB cafeteria after a long day of training drills, eating at a table together. Soft conversation filled the air and Taako was distracted for a split second before he remembered that Magnus asked him a question and he was expected to answer. He turned to Magnus, and put on a show as effortlessly as breathing.

 

“Yeah, my man, why wouldn’t I be?” He grinned, all practiced bluster while on the inside he felt numbness creeping slowly through his veins. Magnus eyed him for a moment longer, before his mouth, too, split into a toothy smile.

 

“Just checking dude! How’s your slice of BoB cookery treating you?” The change of subject was calculated, Taako was sure of it. What’s an easier way to include him undeniably into conversation than to talk about cooking? So he let himself be swept away into an exchange of questions and answers that felt more like muscle memory than anything else.

 

“Please, even a blindfolded platypus could throw together a better meal than this.” Taako’s companions chuckled, Magnus even went so far as to slap him on the back with one hand while he’s still eating with the other.

 

Under the table Taako clenched his fists and pressed them into his knees. The faint taste of dust in his mouth was making him nauseous and it took everything in him to stay focused, stay present, _stay real._ But it was hard when he looked at the table that he _knew_ was occupied by Carey and Killian and only saw moving shapes. Dust. Nothing.

 

“Actually, I think that platypus might have poisoned my fantasy pork chop so your favourite flipwizard is retiring. Yes, harsh I know. No encore from me tonight, folks.” Taako got up before his friends could say anything, his umbra staff hastily swept under his arm from where he’d had it resting against the table. He hears a vague commotion behind as Magnus called after him, but he’s out of the building in a blink.

 

In his room, he slumped against the door and covered his face with his hands. He hadn’t bothered to turn any lights on, so he was alone in the dark. Alone with himself.

 

“Me, myself and I, huh? It’s gonna be like that tonight?” He stammered weakly at himself, removing his hands from his face so he could look at them. He might as well have been looking at a stranger’s shaking fingers. The moments rushed by and Taako counted them by the beating in his chest.  

When he’s at his worst, he swears he can feel dust choke him at every breath as he turns into a ghost of himself. (When he’s at his best, the people he loves most in this world have actual faces and he feels real enough to play at being one of them. )

 

He wasn’t quite there right now, but what scares him more than anything was that he didn’t know what had caused this episode. Sure, Taako hadn’t come back from their adventure in Refuge unscathed. None of them had. But their time-defying escapade had been weeks ago. Months. Taako was over it. Clearly.

 

The elf huffed indignantly, hugging his knees to his chest. The wood of the door at his back was the only grounding sensation he had as he pressed his back into it. “This is bullshit. Fucking. Bullshit.” Taako summoned a sphere of light into his hands. “See, there are your hands. Your magic, created by your very own set of beautiful hands.” For the next few minutes he just stared at his hands, moving his fingers slowly until his body felt his own again.

 

Keeping his breathing steady, Taako racked his brain for what could have caused an episode this bad. Now his mind was no longer panicking, it didn’t take him long.

 

Kravitz had come over last night. Something had happened that had knocked Taako’s world so off kilter that he should have expected this to happen, really. With a shuddering breath he thinks back.

He recalled Kravitz stepping out of a tear in space, face still skeletal as it usually was when he came straight from bounty hunting. Taako had made a quip about it (“Evening to you too, Skeletor.” Something or other), Kravitz had laughed and changed his face to the handsome features Taako knew and adored. The usual.

 

Replaying the night in his mind, nothing struck him as out of the ordinary. And yet, there had been this moment. He could see it clearly now, Taako had been talking about something, completely absorbed in his own story as he was wont to be. He’d been seated snugly in the crook of Krav’s arm as it was slung casually over Taako’s shoulders. At the end of the story, out of some impulse, he’d looked up. Kravitz’s face held such an unabashed look of genuine and intense interest in him that it shifted something in Taako.

 

In an instant he’d felt it, the vague layer of _other_ that always seemed to cling to people had fallen away. Kravitz was just Kravitz; real, palpable and present. It made Taako feel more real, too. He’d kissed Kravitz with wild abandon, desperate to hold on to that moment, that feeling. Hands tangled in curly locks. Breaths shared so intimately that Taako didn’t know whether it made him sick or proud. “I love you.” He’d said, for the first time. When you said something it became real, it worked that way with magic just the same as it did with the heart. Kravitz had smiled so sweetly that Taako had to kiss him again; two confessions were more than he could have handled that night.

 

They had spent the evening together, as per their routine whenever they met for these little date-nights. Nothing had changed, yet when Kravitz inevitably was called away to his very demanding job Taako had felt the world collapse around him. It wasn’t until Kravitz was gone that the familiar numbness began to settle back into his bones, making him realize with startling clarity how _alive_ he’d been feeling up until that point. For a while, he hadn’t been a ghost pressing what collected attention he had to his chest like a child afraid to get his toys stolen. With Kravitz he’d simply existed, secure in the belief that the attention he was being given was genuine, that Kravitz had been looking at him and had _seen_ him.

 

The reason Taako was so undeniably fucked up at the moment was simply that he loved Kravitz so damn much and that the way he’d felt the night before reminded him too much of how Sazed had felt. Now he knew what Sazed had really done to him, that wasn’t exactly what Taako wanted to be remembering.

 

What Sazed had wanted, it wasn’t some he could give. Not back then, especially. Taako never felt quite like a person so he soaked up attention like a sponge; if people were looking at him that meant he existed. Sizzle it up with Taako had been the embodiment of that need. To turn it into a two man show would have been a steady spiral back into a place Taako never wanted to be again, no matter how much he loved Sazed. It was selfish of him, but by being selfish was how he’d survived for so long. Sazed hadn’t understood, had mistaken it for utter egotism, as a personal slight against him. By denying Sazed he lost both Sizzle it up _and_ the one person in the world who wasn’t dust in the wind to him.

 

That feeling, not of hitting rock bottom but smashing through that lowest of places to a personal kind of hell, was something Taako never wanted to experience again. And for a long time he never had to worry about it! No one was ever going to be as important to him as Sazed had been, he’d just continue to live as a spectre floating through dust and that would have to be fine. Only it wasn’t.

 

Their time in Refuge had opened up old wounds Taako had forgotten were there, festering and never healing. Kravitz’s visit the night before had ripped them wide open with such wild abandon that he felt himself slipping.

 

“I can’t do this again..” He whispered, to no one, to himself. Those might as well be synonyms.

 

The smell of sulphur permeated the air; Taako was hardly aware of it. His trembling hands could barely be refrained from tearing at his hair.

 

A ripping sound filled the room and suddenly Kravitz was there. Taako looked up at him, still from his seat against the door. “I’m sorry for intruding, love.” Kravitz said, gentle as he always was with Taako. “I’ll leave if you want me to.”

 

“Okay how the actual fuck.” He didn’t even need to finish his question or wait for a reply. The answer was easily supplied.

 

“Magnus.”

 

Kravitz nodded, putting his scythe away as he apparently felt like Taako wasn’t going to send him away. Taako, for one, wasn’t having any of that. In an instant he was up on his feet, chin held defiantly high as if to draw attention away from his still trembling hands.

 

“Well, my man, you can more that pretty posterior of yours right back to the astral plane because I’m fine. You hear me? Gucci, ten-outta-ten, all good in the brain department.” As he spoke he could almost physically feel a layer of _something_ enveloping his perception, transparent and imperceptible. Taako knew it well, this separation of the world into _everything_ and him. What scared him, still terrified him, was that Kravitz seemed to now be included in ‘and him’. He might be a ghost to everyone and everything but Kravitz still somehow remained stubbornly real.

 

“Taako, love. I swear I’ll leave if you really wanted, but..” Kravitz said. In his eyes Taako thought he could see fear. “Please, talk to me.”

 

And the dam broke, crumbled, all at once.

 

Taako stumbled into Kravitz, who caught him easily and cradled the back of Taako’s head gently as he cried and cried and cried.

 

Sazed had never been like this, had never once considered Taako’s feelings, his perspective. Had never once listened to him while the world crumbled into dust before Taako’s eyes. Sazed had heard “no” and thought “selfish.” Kravitz had heard “I’m fine” and knew it had meant “Help me.”

 

 _Talk to me_. Simple words, really.

 

So Taako did. Not about all of it, not right away. There were things that Taako could not bear to speak aloud and might never be able to. There were things that Taako didn’t even know, couldn’t articulate, static at the edges of his vision that he’d always considered just another part of whatever was wrong with him.

 

He told Kravitz between tears and hiccups and sobbing how sometimes everyone was talking dust to him. He told Kravitz how he was scared to fall in love, because the last time he made that mistake he was completely and utterly betrayed.

 

Kravitz never blanched, never made fun. He listened, then said:

 

“So, if we’re made of dust, we can settle too.”

 

Simple words, really.

 

And, if only for a while, Taako believed them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I would love a comment if you liked it! 
> 
> my tumblr is imustspeakmyheart if anyone is interested :)
> 
> The title (and what inspired what Kravitz says to Taako at the end) is from The Projectionist by Sleeping at Last, a very good song by a very good artist. I do recommend a listen!


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